People Are Still Mad At Nico Hines, Who Has Yet To Apologize For That Whole Olympic Grindr Outing Fiasco

Ugh, it’s unpleasant enough that Nico Hines pulled a “let’s out the gay athletes” trick in Rio, but a new op-ed points out another unpleasant aspect of the stunt: “Media coverage of Grindr reduces it to a sex-on-demand service,” says a new Salon op-ed. “Here’s why it’s so much more.”

In the his op-ed, Peter Kispert writes that Grindr is not the “meat market” that Hines seems to think it is. He also explains how the app has changed his life beyond just hookups, and what it would have meant for him as an 18-year-old to have access to such an easy connection to gay community.

One of the best things about Grindr, he writes, is that it proves “gay people are everywhere.” (We really are!) And if there’s anything most humans have in common, it’s that we’re wired for sex. And many of us are open to having sex between matching genitals.

In Peter’s piece, he talks about all the friends he’s made on the app, and his first love. It’s not just for trashy hookups (though it’s that, too), and Hines missed that sense of connection and community in his desperate pursuit of lurid clickbait.